13
He woke up screaming.
Leaning over him was a guy with thick glasses. He was wearing a blue jacket, baggy pleated pants, and a lanyard with a plastic ID card labeled “Clifton Swank.” “Hey, yo, kid,” he said in a thick New York accent. “You okay?”
Corey sat bolt upright. The sweeper was gone. It had missed him. It had missed a lot of garbage, too. Pages of newspapers were swirling in the air like dancing ghosts. He breathed in a gulp of air and shivered.
“It got cooler,” Corey said. “How long was I unconscious?”
“I don’t know, I just got here,” Swank said. “I can’t believe people just left you in the gutter. Welcome to New York, huh? Your parents around?”
“No,” Corey said, rubbing his eyes.
“Sit still, my friend. Let me call nine-one-one. . . .”
Before Corey could reply, a sheet of newspaper whapped him in the face. As he peeled it off, he couldn’t help noticing the headline:
PARENTS INCREASINGLY ALLOW HIGH SCHOOL CHILDREN
TO OWN MOBILE TELEPHONES, CITING SAFETY CONCERNS
“What the—?” His eyes darted to the top of the page.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
Corey’s blood was pumping so hard he thought his heart would spring right out of his mouth and splat into the street. “So . . .” He had to gulp to keep from choking. “It’s . . . it’s nine-eleven?”
“Nine-one-one, three digits that save lives!” Clifton Swank was punching buttons on a flip phone the size of a shoe. “The medics will take care of you.”
Over Swank’s head loomed a steel-and-glass tower. Its sides formed a perfect square, sheathed with vertical bands of steel, rising perfectly straight—no setback, no extra design. It was as if Jack’s beans, instead of sprouting a stalk, had somehow caused a giant metal cage to stretch upward into the clouds.
“I. Don’t. Believe this . . .” Corey glanced back toward the Oculus, but it was gone. So was the Memorial. In its place was a windswept cement plaza. And across the plaza was the other tower, absolutely identical, bouncing the sunlight into Corey’s eyes.
He was there.
He’d made it.
Shielding his brow, he rose slowly. He had looked at a million images of the towers, but actually seeing them made him feel dizzy. It wasn’t their beauty, exactly. They were plain and a little dull looking. But they stood like trees in a vast field, and that’s what made them different from anything in the city. They weren’t wedged into a thicket of buildings and narrow streets, like every other skyscraper. You saw them head to toe. It made them seem taller. Impossibly tall. Proud. Pure.
And they were about to disappear forever.
Corey sprang to his feet and looked at his phone. 8:03.
“Heyyyy, nice device . . . ,” Swank said, looking away from his phone to stare at Corey’s.
“Uh, I have to go,” Corey said, shoving the phone into his pocket. “Do you know where 155 Cedar Street is?”
“Head down Washington Street, turn . . . left, I think? . . . on Cedar. That way.” Swank pointed downtown. “Seriously, though, kid, you’re not going anywhere just yet. We have a few minutes before the EMTs get here. So while we’re waiting . . . y’know, I’m involved in a tech startup. I’d love to see that mobile phone—”
“My phone?” Corey whirled to face the guy.
“Whoa . . . dude . . . ,” Swank said, backing away. “Touchy . . .”
“Okay, sorry. Didn’t mean to yell. But listen to me, and listen close. Promise me you won’t think I’m crazy?”
Swank shrugged. “Sure.”
“Forget about my phone. And forget about the EMTs. They will be having a long day. Go home—now! Call everyone you know who works down here, and tell them to go home, too. In forty minutes, three thousand people are going to die.”
“Wait, what?” Swank said.
“The first plane hits at eight forty-six, the second at nine oh three. By the end of the day the Twin Towers are gone. Do you understand—gone. As in, piles of smoking steel.”
“Uh-huh. Right.” Swank held up his hand and made a V sign. “How many fingers do you see?”
“Just listen to me—we don’t have time!”
By now, two other strangers had stopped to listen. Corey turned away and sprinted across the plaza. He could hear Swank calling out behind him.
An ambulance was making its way up Church Street. It was probably the one Swank had called for him. Corey ducked behind a mail truck parked at the curb. Quickly he unfolded a sheet he’d taken from Papou’s notebook.
MARIA FLETCHER 9/11/01 SCHEDULE
5:45 a.m. Probable wake-up time. Would not tell me who she stayed with. Most likely Amy on Prospect Park West, Sarah on East 73rd, Lauren on Bethune St. She liked to go for a morning run before leaving for work.
8:07 a.m. Normal time she emerged from C train at Fulton Street Station (Fulton and Broadway). Walked west on Fulton toward World Trade Center. Could not find her. Possibly took other train besides C.
8:07–8:30 a.m. Coffee, newspaper, etc. I searched for her in every coffee shop from Cedar to Duane and from Washington to Broadway. Still leaves plenty more!
8:30 a.m. Approximate arrival at office at Karelian Group, 95th floor, Tower 2.
Corey focused on the 8:07–8:30 part. That was the big unknown. Just because his yiayia usually went to a coffee shop didn’t mean she always did.
It was time for Corey to test his hunch. He had a feeling about where she’d gone this morning.
Reaching into his backpack, he pulled out the yellowed passport of his great-great-grandfather. “I can’t pronounce your name,” he whispered, staring into the grim, thickly mustached face, “but happy name day anyway. And if you’re in a place where you can look down on this day, please help me out. Please.”
People were now thronging out of the subway stop a block away, filling the plaza. Corey peered around the corner of the truck. The ambulance was stopped where he had been a few moments ago. He couldn’t see Clifton Swank through the crowd.
Good.
Clutching the passport and the photo of his grandmother, Corey sprinted south across the plaza. “Go home!” he shouted, dodging commuters left and right. “Everybody, go home!”
No one stopped. A few people looked at him like he was crazy. This was useless. As he reached the edge of the plaza, he saw a sign for Washington Street, heading south. He barreled across the street, narrowly missing being hit by a biker and two taxis. Washington Street was narrow and dark, and as he took a left on Cedar, he checked the address.
Instead of a churchy-looking building, 155 Cedar was a simple brownstone, actually brown. A bulletin board in a glass case announced ST. NICHOLAS GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH with a long list of future events—events Corey knew would never occur. He climbed the stoop and pulled open a glass door.
The entry foyer looked like any other Greek church—a Christ icon on a table in the center, a wooden table with square wooden cubbies for different-sized candles and donations, another table containing a sand pit to insert the lit candles. Behind the foyer was a church that stretched to the back of the building, with dark wooden pews.
A silver-haired man, wearing a navy-blue suit, was picking up papers from the pews. “May I help you, young man?” he said in a thick Greek accent.
“I’m looking for Maria Fletcher?” Corey said.
The man knitted his eyebrows. “I don’t know the name.”
“She looks like this.” Corey ran to him, holding out the photo of her, now stained from the fall into the gutter. “Her grandfather’s name was . . .” He took a deep breath and tried to remember the pronunciation. “Yvonne . . . theese. Evanthis.”
“Ah, today is his name day,” the man said.
“Yes!” Corey’s pulse raced. “Yes, that’s exactly right! So I thought . . . maybe she might be here. Do people come to the church on name days?”
The man shrugged. “Some do, yes. Would you like to sit and wait?”
Corey checked his watch. 8:13.
If he was right, she would show up any minute. If he was wrong, she was on her way to work.
“I have to check something,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “If she comes in, tell her to stay, okay? What’s your cell number?”
The man laughed. “This is a church, not a prison. There are no cells.”
“Cell phone!” Corey said, grabbing a flyer from a table. “Here. I’ll write my phone number on this. Please text me if she comes.”
“Text?”
“Call!”
“I’m Taso, and here’s my card, if you need to call me,” the man said, reaching into his pocket for a business card. “If she arrives, whom shall I say is asking?”
Corey almost said her grandson. But she didn’t have a grandson in 2001. “Her husband. I mean, I’m not her husband. I . . . work for him. This is important.”
He raced out of the church, back the way he came. He examined the face of every person on the sidewalk. He ducked into a coffee shop, a Mexican restaurant, and a burger place, making sure to check every newsstand. As he emerged onto the plaza again, he checked the time. 8:21.
On the plaza, people were crisscrossing every which way. They walked faster than people in the present. It took Corey a moment to realize why. No one was looking down at a phone. Which made it easier to see faces.
“Maria Fletcher!” Corey didn’t care if he sounded like a nutcase. “Maria!”
A cabdriver, stopped at a light, hung his head out the driver window, and sang the “Maria” song from West Side Story.
“Not funny!” Corey snapped.
“You looking for somebody?” he said.
Corey held out the photo. “My grandmother. It’s an emergency! A big one.”
“Import-export, right?” the guy said, nodding. “The Karelian Group?”
Corey nearly dropped the photo. “Wait, you know her?”
“Nahhh, but I seen the face. This is my beat. The workers tip good, so I hang here every morning. That gang—the Karelian people? A lot of ’em do the Cosmic Diner for breakfast. Can’t guarantee, but we could check it out.”
Corey jumped into the cab. The driver’s ID plate said his name was Eddie. Eddie did a U-turn, leaning on the horn. He sped west on Liberty Street and took a sharp turn on Church. As he wove in and out of traffic, Corey checked his call log.
The last message was from Leila. From the future. From the network account his parents paid for. Many, many years from now.
Would that even work now?
Quickly he pulled out Taso’s business card and tapped out the number.
Nothing.
“Head back!” Corey said. “To the Greek church.”
“But we—”
“Now! St. Nicholas’s. Do you know where it is?”
Eddie yanked the steering wheel to the left. “Fasten that belt, kid. I own these streets!”